Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Train of thought

In Sunday's 9th inning fiasco, all runs were unearned, so Seanez's ERA actually dropped, to 5.12. He now can boast he's pitched 9 innings without giving up an earned run. Whoop-de-fuckin'-doo.

In said fiasco, Tavarez got the save, which is even more ridiculous.

Of course, it also comes down to Mirabelli's passed ball on the strikeout. For all the talk of Mirabelli's 6 passed balls in 2005, he has 4 with the Sox already, so is on pace to end the season with over 20.

Meanwhile, Bard (who has no passed balls with SD) is batting .361 with an OPS of over 1.000. In a pitcher's park.

On Sunday, in back-to-back pitches by Mark Mulder, Bellhorn and Bard hit the longest and second-longest homeruns ever hit in Petco Park, with distances of 438 and 434 feet (Bard's 434 hit tying Sosa's record from 2002). By the end of the day Bard's distance was down to third place, thanks to Albert Pujols (436 feet).

Really now, are distance estimates of home runs hit out of the stadium good down to the foot? I can't imagine that's the case; maybe they can do it to within 5 feet or so. Yet they state these numbers with such certainty. Anyone know how they get these numbers?

Update: Here's how most parks do it. I was wrong - it's probably not good to better than 10-20 feet. Meaning Sosa, Bard, Bellhorn, and Pujols (and probably a bunch of other guys) are tied for first at Petco. QuesTec has offered a $15,000 software upgrade so their cameras can estimate distances "to within one meter", but naturally no one's forked out that sort of money. Of course, "within one meter" is still not accurate enough to distinguish Bellhorn's hit from Bard's.

Update 2: I forgot about Hit Tracker. Not sure about its accuracy, or error bars, but it's gotta be better than the "lookup" tables the parks use. Apparently Ted Williams's "red seat" shot, by the current definition of "distance" (how far the HR would've gone had it been allowed to land on the ground) was much more than 502 feet: 525-540 or so, possibly more than Mantle's legendary blast.